Burning Low
by Kihin Ranno
Summary: Christmas is supposed to be a time for coming together, but this year, Veronica spends time with one person she would much rather have avoided.


Burning Low  
1/1  
by Kihin Ranno  
PG-13

It was Christmas day before he finally showed up at her doorstep.

Veronica knew it was him before she opened the door. Or perhaps she had secretly been hoping it was him. If that was the case, he probably wouldn't have been able to guess it from the way she barred his entrance, looking at him with various shades of anger, disappointment, and a little sadness.

Logan chuckled and glanced down at the ground, hunching his shoulders and shuffling his feet. "You know, that Christmas tree doesn't really provide an appropriate backdrop to your look of shame."

"We generally don't pull out the fake fire and pitchforks until Tax Day," Veronica drawled, doing nothing to soften her gaze.

Logan nodded, but not surprisingly, he didn't appreciate her poverty humor. "Your dad around?"

Veronica shook her head. "Tracking down a bail jumper in Santa Monica."

"On Christmas?"

"He wants to be able to pay for the presents," Veronica said, bristling at the intimation that she was being neglected.

Logan nodded quickly, respecting the boundary. "And Wallace--"

"Still in Chicago with his dad. Which you knew," Veronica interrupted. "Let's get to the point. What are you doing here Logan?"

He shrugged, not looking up. He could never seem to look at her in moments like this. "I wanted to make sure you were all right."

"You certainly waited long enough," Veronica muttered critically.

He looked at her then, like she'd kicked an open wound and spurred him into action. "Yeah, well, I was kind of in jail."

"And whose fault is that?" Veronica snapped. "Damn it, Logan. Did you think that I wouldn't hear about it? It was all over the news. 'Logan Echolls takes a tire iron to a cop car, bribes a deputy to put him in the same cell as the Hearst rapist and brainwashed crony, both of whom wind up in the hospital.'" She shook her head, realizing that they have been in this position before. She would have laughed thinking that this was their version of being stuck in a rut, if only she were in any mood to laugh. "What were you thinking?"

"I was thinking that a guy I trusted tried to kill my--" He stopped himself just in time, but it didn't do much.

"He betrayed me," Logan concluded, his voice rough. "And he tried to… hurt you."

Veronica tried very hard not to think about how he'd inverted the two points and that she knew, she _knew_ that he'd done it on purpose.

"You can say the word, you know," Veronica said, doing something he always hated: making a personal argument political.

He clenched his jaw so that it looked like she could cut her skin on his angles and edges. "No, actually, I can't."

For once, she decided to drop it.

"I'm fine," she said, in reference to his supposed motives. "There. Now you know." She turned to go back inside.

He took a hold of the door, his fingers curling around the flimsy wood and holding it steady, making it creak. She marveled at how she didn't wince, no longer expecting him to rip it off its hinges.

"Veronica," he said, his voice dropping an octave or two. It's the tone he used when they had serious discussions, when they would both dispense with the games, the snark, the defense mechanisms as best as they could, and just talk.

Not surprisingly, such talks rarely went well.

"I don't believe you," he told her matter-of-factly. "I need… I need you to make me believe you."

It occurred to her that even after the break-up, he still needed her. It felt familiar, and it was almost comforting.

She sighed, shoulders drooping. "I'm okay. Really."

"You'll pardon my skepticism," he drawled, making it sound like a command.

She tilted her head to the side, her eyes narrowed. "If you'll recall, I didn't spend too much time grieving when I first found out what happened at Shelly Pomroy's party." She paused. "All of it."

Logan frowned. She had a feeling that he remembered very little of the days that passed between the time that Beaver jumped and broke the night apart and the hour, the minute, the _second_ they agreed to try again. After all, he'd been dealing with his father's murder. She would never have blamed him for being distracted then.

"I suppose not," he recalled quietly.

Veronica nodded, briefly remembering the summer before. She was not one for self-actualization; she preferred to be active. Still, even she couldn't feign ignorance about her willingness to move on from that horrible night at the Neptune Grand. Yes, it had been one of the worst in her life and just about anyone else might have never recovered from what she went through. But when her father walked through the door, whole and real and _alive_, she didn't care about anything else. Her Dad was still there. Nothing else mattered.

At that point, tragedy was the same thing as a Tuesday for her. So she'd decided to pick up the pieces, and move on.

But no, Logan Echolls didn't understand that concept. For all his progress, he still only saw whole things and broken things. He didn't know that you could glue the shattered glass back together.

"You didn't ask before," she said suddenly, for once not accusing him.

"I was afraid to ask before," Logan said with just a bit too much honesty.

Veronica felt her nails clawing at her palms. "Well, I'm sorry for not living up to the high standards of Lifetime movies," Veronica said. "But there's no post-traumatic stress to see here."

Logan fidgeted elegantly, an oxymoron she was certain only he was capable of. "Look, I know… I'm not the person you'd want to talk to about this--"

"It has nothing to do with you," she answered, the epiphany finally dawning. Wallace was right; not everything was about her.

His limbs began to go rigid. His temper was about to get the best of him. "Damn it, Veronica, why won't you just--"

"I'm not going to cry on your shoulder just so you can get over your guilt complex," Veronica snapped with the usual amount of acid.

Logan glared at her openly. And that's when she knew there was no more treading carefully in a minefield for him. He was just going to run straight until he hit a bomb.

"So maybe that is part of why I came. Because he tried to… he tried to **rape** you, and I wasn't there. I wasn't anywhere near there, and I should have been. That was what I was trying to do, but it didn't matter because you were almost killed. Again." He jerked his hands, looking so desperate to punch something that he almost hit himself. "And it didn't matter that I told you to be careful. It didn't matter that I was trying to prevent it. Nothing that I did mattered before, so maybe I am trying to make something matter now. And that's not wrong, Veronica, so don't you dare make me feel like it is!"

The force of his anger practically smothered her. He'd been angry with her before. Hell, they've even had this fight before, but now it was different. Everything changed after he ended things.

"You aren't responsible for me, Logan," Veronica said, caught between the need to be indignant and the need to absolve him of responsibility.

"Someone has to be," Logan said, seething. "Since you do have this amazing tendency to find yourself alone with homicidal maniacs."

Veronica caught the flash of pain at the reminder that his father had been one of those maniacs. And now that there was no way to heal the wound, she was going to have to pick at the scab. "I couldn't just let him get away with raping another girl."

"But you could have called someone!" Logan yelled, screaming sense and reason into her face, things she knew her father has been thinking but has been careful not to say. "Campus security, Weevil, even that prick of a Sheriff might have actually listened to you. But you didn't try. You just went in there like Indesctructo Girl, and I have to hear a considerably embellished version about what happened from some stupid sorority girl who pretty much described my worst nightmare in living Technicolor. So really, can you blame me for destroying that car or for beating that son of a bitch and his God damn sidekick into the pavement?"

Her throat was starting to tighten, never a good sign. He had a point of course. That's why she hated this argument. But Veronica Mars does not surrender. "I did it my way, and it worked. We got the guys, you got your jollies by bloodying them up, and everyone went home."

"But we didn't all go home in one piece," he said through his teeth, unable to leave it alone.

"Not everyone wears disaster like a badge of honor!" she exclaimed, her adrenaline rushing so fast that she couldn't keep her hands steady. "Not everyone has to wallow and hit rock bottom before pulling themselves back up!"

"And not everyone expects you to be perfect!" Logan yelled back, his arms starting to reach out to shake her. He stopped, letting them hang awkwardly in the air. "That's only you."

"I don't need this!" Veronica shouted, spitting. "I am not going to be the person who can't get over their past. And I'm not going to be the person crying in the therapist's office for the rest of my life. I know who I am, and I do not need you coming around here trying to coddle me to soothe your conscience! I don't need grief counseling, I don't need a hug, I don't need…"

She stopped when he saw his face. That's when she realized what she'd been saying.

"Of course you don't," Logan said, a little amazed at himself. He shook his head quickly, his lips so tight they almost disappeared. "Of course you don't." He stood there for a minute, and then he turned to leave.

"Logan!" Veronica called out, her voice cracking oddly. She bit the inside of her cheek. She would not break. Not now.

He didn't stop. He just said, "I remembered," and kept walking.

Seconds later, he was gone.

She stood in the doorway, her eyes wet and on fire and her entire body shaking. She thought, rather absurdly, that in the movie version of her life, she would have run after him. After all, it had to be prettier than the grittier reality. She had to get back together with the leading man, fall into his arms, let him kiss her and make it all better.

And Veronica Mars was not that girl. She would not go back to him. She would keep moving forward. But no matter what, she wouldn't think about Logan, wouldn't talk about him, wouldn't concede anything he had tried to drag out of her. She was too strong for that. She would not give in. She would not falter. She would not crumble, even when he wasn't there to see it. She was just going to keep going.

Maybe if she did that, someday, she'd be okay.


End file.
